With
few exceptions, reactionary environmentalists have adopted their beliefs and
values not because of science but in spite of it. The reactionaries are not
averse to using the authority of science when the findings of scientific studies
happen to fit. But when their beliefs are at odds with the scientists, they
simply ignore science. Progressives know that any intelligent environmental
policy must be based on scientific facts. And when progressives take a close
look at the facts, they find the reactionaries are often wrong.

Case Study: Acid Rain.
One controversial provision of the new Clean Air Act seeks to reduce the amount
of acid rain in order to reduce the acidity of our lakes. Its regulations are
based on the assumption of a lengthy causal chain: Midwestern utility companies
burn coal, which releases sulphur dioxide, which is carried across the continent
by wind. The sulphur dioxide accumulates in clouds and is deposited in lakes and
streams in places as distant as the Northeast and Canada by "acid rain."

Fortunately, the theory is mostly wrong. Beginning in 1980, the federal
government funded a ten-year, $500 million study of acid rain, the National Acid
Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP).
[187] It was the most comprehensive study ever conducted on a single
environmental issue. Its principal finding: acid rain has very little impact on
the acidity of lakes.

Although all rainfall is naturally acidic, some man-made emissions, primarily
oxides of sulphur, can increase the acidity of rain, fog or snow. [188]

Yet there is almost no correlation between acid rain and acid lakes.

Instead, almost 80 percent of the acidity
in lakes is caused by the
acidity of nearby topsoil.

Lakes and streams get more
than 90 percent of their water not from rain but from surface runoff, which is
filtered through topsoil around the lake. The topsoil can become acidic because
of a natural buildup of decayed and decaying vegetation. The myth that acid rain
is the chief culprit is disproved by evidence collected in this country and
around the world. [See Figure IX.]

Rain in Florida is only
one-sixth as acid as rain in the Adirondacks, yet the concentration of acid in
Central Florida lakes is six times higher than in Adirondack lakes.

Frazier Island in
Australia receives no man-made emissions, yet 78 percent of its lakes and 98
percent of its surface water are highly acidic.

A major conclusion of the
NAPAP study is that the approach taken under the new Clean Air Act is an
expensive way to accomplish very little:

If the proposals cut
sulphur emissions by 50 percent, we would have to wait decades for any
observable effect, and the cost would be in excess of $100 billion.

Even then, NAPAP
estimates that only about 80 lakes would improve.

By
contrast, scientists can reduce the acidity of lakes directly by using crushed
limestone. We can neutralize all the acid lakes in the Northeast, whether the
acidity is natural or caused by man, by liming at a cost of only $500,000 per
year.
[189]

Case Study: Global Warming.
For years, the most extreme alarmists have warned that a significant increase
in average temperatures would cause ecological disaster. Some have suggested
that palm trees would grow in Canada, tropical rain forests would become
deserts, the ice caps would melt, coastal regions would be flooded, major
crop-growing regions of the world would experience recurrent droughts, and
hurricanes would become more frequent and destructive. U.S. Senator and
presidential candidate Albert Gore, Jr. even compared global warming to the
Holocaust.
[190] Are these predictions justified?

Many
of the climate modelers who made dire predictions about global warming a few
years ago have substantially changed their tunes:

Whereas in 1988 global warming theorists were predicting a temperature rise
(from doubled carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) of between 4.5 and 6.0 degrees
Celsius, the most likely projection now is 1.5 degrees; and the respected Max
Planck Institute is predicting only 0.7 degrees. [191]

Whereas the climate modelers in 1980 were forecasting an increase in sea level
of 30 feet, that forecast fell to three to five feet by 1988, and the current
worst-case forecast is only 12 inches.
[192]

New evidence shows that the polar ice caps are growing, not melting, and
almost all of the warming at the poles is occurring during the polar winters,
when no melting can occur.
[193]

New research on hurricanes shows that they are not produced by global warming
and, if anything, warmer temperatures make hurricanes less severe.
[194]

Most of the warming so far has occurred at night, reducing the number of
frosts and increasing the growing season for farmers – 1990, one of the
warmest years in recent history, was year for crops.
[195]

Moreover, as scientists
look more closely at temperature data, the evidence of warming is becoming more
elusive:

In the U.S., which has
the best climate records in the world, data adjusted for urbanization show no
statistically significant temperature increase in the 48 contiguous states
over the last century.
[196] [See Figure X.]

Similarly, new
urban-adjusted temperature records in Europe and Canada show no evidence of
global warming there.
[197]

A recent MIT study shows
no significant warming in ocean tem­peratures over the past 120 years. [198]

Satellite measurements
of global temperature, which are not distorted by their surroundings, show no
warming trend over the past decade.
[199] [See Figure XI.]

In the scientific
community, there is a debate over global warming. Media coverage tends to assume
the debate is between those who say climate will change and those who say it
won't. This is misleading. The actual debate is between those who argue that
there will be a large and catastrophic increase in global temperatures and those
who believe that any climate change will be quite small, generally beneficial
and possibly indistinguishable from normal climate variability. Increasingly,
scientists are moving toward the latter posi­tion, yet most media reports remain
wedded to the idea of an apocalypse.